For Authors

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE AND POLICY

The Journal will accept original manuscripts which contain material that has not been reported elsewhere, except in the form of an abstract of not more than 400 words. Prior abstract presentations should be described in a footnote to the title. Submissions should be accompanied by a letter requesting evaluation for publication. Manuscripts must be submitted online using the following url:

Please read ALL instructions to authors before submitting.

PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPT Guidelines on Length

Original research articles should be a maximum of 3000 words excluding the references and tables. Reviews should be a maximum of 4000 words excluding the references and tables. Rapid Communications should be a maximum of 2000 words.

Prepare manuscripts double spaced in Microsoft Word. Leave ample margins on both sides, top and bottom.

Please remove ALL author identifiers from the manuscript. Upload a separate title page as a Cover Page which includes the full title, the author's names and affiliations, the source of a work or study (if any), and a running title of about 45 characters. Please indicate the name, address, phone number, fax number,and email address of the author to whom correspondence should be addressed. The title page in the article should only include the full title and a running title of about 45 characters.

The second page should consist of an abstract of not more than 250 words, which should be self-explanatory without reference to the text. One possible format could be: abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, acknowledgments, and references.

Number pages consecutively. Consult an issue of the Journal for the exact format.

Letters to the Editor(s):

Letters to the Editor(s) are welcomed, but with a 500 word limit and no more than one (1) table OR figure, and with a maximum of four (4) references.

Important

Please upload individual files of all manuscript material—do NOT upload a single PDF file containing all text, figure, and table files of your paper. Once all individual files are uploaded on to Manuscript Central, the system will automatically create a single PDF proof for you and the peer-review process.

Disclosure Statement

Immediately following the Acknowledgments section, include a section entitled Author Disclosure Statement. This text must be part of your actual manuscript file. In this portion of the paper, authors must disclose any commercial associations that might create a conflict of interest in connection with submitted manuscripts. This statement should include appropriate information for EACH author, thereby representing that competing financial interests of all authors have been appropriately disclosed according to the policy of the Journal. It is important that all conflicts of interest, whether they are actual or potential, be disclosed. This information will remain confidential while the paper is being reviewed and will not influence the editorial decision.

If no conflicts exist, the authors must state "No competing financial interests exist."

TABLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Each table and figure should be prepared in separate files. Do not include tables or figures as part of the main text file.Each table should be prepared in a separate file in Microsoft Word.Use Arabic numerals to number tables. Remember each table must stand alone-i.e., contain all necessary information in the caption, and the table itself must be understood independently of the text. Details of experimental conditions should be included in the table footnotes. Information that appears in the text should not be repeated in tables, and tables should not contain data that can be given in the text in one or two sentences.

Figures/images should be presented according to these guidelines:

Do not include any illustrations as part of your text file.

Do not prepare any figures in Word as they are not workable.

Line illustrations must be submitted at 1200 DPI.

Halftones and color photos should be submitted at 300 DPI.

Please submit only TIFF or EPS files.

Color art must be saved as CYMK not RGB or INDEX. If RGB files are submitted, the files will be converted to CYMK, and some slight color variation may occur.

Do NOT submit PowerPoint or Excel files. Adobe is the software of choice.

Please name your artwork files with the submitting authors name i.e. SmithFig1.tif, SmithTable2.tif etc. Label figures and tables inside the files in addition to naming the file with the figure or table numbers. Authors who do not follow these guidelines may have their submission returned to them without being reviewed.

You will be given directions on how to correct any files which do not pass.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT ART FILES

Converting Word or Excel files: Perhaps the best and easiest way to convert Word or Excel files into a format which is suitable for print is to scan them using the below guidelines:

A list of figure legends should be supplied at the end of the manuscript, double spaced. Magnifications should be included where appropriate. Illustrations will not be returned unless requested. ZIP disks containing figures may be accepted only if it is Photoshop or Illustrator TIF or EPS format. All other disks will be rejected.

A complete, separately collated set must be submitted with each copy of the manuscript. Illustrations can be printed in color with a subsidy from the author and are encouraged. Contact the publisher for details.

REFERENCES

References in text must be cited in numerical order using superscript numbers. Do not use author/date format. The reference list should be numbered and listed in the order that references are cited in the text - numerical rather than alphabetical.

Please list all the authors when there are six or fewer. When there are seven or more authors, list only the first three, followed by “et al.” If it is necessary to cite an abstract, this should be designated. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the references, and are reminded that inaccurate references are highly frustrating to the reader, the cited author, and indexing services.

PERMISSIONS

The author must obtain permission to reproduce figures, tables and text from previously published material. Written permission must be obtained from the original copyright holder (generally the publisher, not the author or editor) of the journal or book concerned. An appropriate credit line should be included in the figure legend or table footnote, and full publication information should be included in the reference list. Adaptions of figures or tables must carry a citation in the figure legend or table footnote and there must be a full reference given in the reference list. Written permission must be obtained from the author of any unpublished material cited from other laboratories, and should accompany the manuscript.

REPRINTS

Reprints may be ordered by following the special instructions that will accompany page proofs, and should be ordered at the time the corresponding author returns the corrected page proofs to the Publisher. Reprints ordered after an issue is printed will be charged at a substantially higher rate.

Does your research funder have an open access mandate or would you like to expand the dissemination of your research?

The Liebert Open Access option allows authors to publish open access in our esteemed subscription-based journals.

The benefits of Liebert Open Access include:

- High visibility; open access articles are freely available online upon publication

- You retain copyright with the open access license allowing broad dissemination of your research

- You can freely share your article in repositories and research networks without restrictions

- Easy compliance with open access mandates

- Rigorous editorial and peer-review

- Targeted email announcement featuring a direct link to article

Identification and Marketing Open access articles are listed with an OA icon in journal tables of content (TOC), TOC alerts, and in marketing announcements. Open access articles are highlighted and promoted in targeted email announcements to thousands of research leaders in your field.

Copyright and Licensing If you choose to publish with open access, you will retain copyright of your article and a Creative Commons license will be applied. The liberal Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY) license is the default open access license used at Mary Ann Liebert Publishers. The CC-BY license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.

At this time we allow authors to choose between the CC-BY or CC-BY-NonCommercial license. A limited number of journals offer NonCommercial licenses exclusively.

Ordering Open Access Once your article has been accepted for publication in a journal, you will receive an email with information on ordering Liebert Open Access. If you would like more information about Liebert Open Access or would like to order open access, please email openaccess@liebertpub.com.

Publishing open access includes an article publication charge (APC) and authors are asked to fill out a short open access order form. You can pay by credit card or receive an invoice to be returned with payment or via bank transfer. Please remember that traditional subscription journals can carry mandatory or optional author fees. The Liebert Open Access APC does not cover or replace existing publication or author fees.

Publishing biomedical or biotechnology research?Biomedical researchers should consider publishing inBioResearch Open Access, a fully open access peer-reviewed journal dedicated to publishing top research in the biomedical and biotechnology fields. For details, please visit the information for authors on the journal website.

*Please note that PubMedCentral, not the Publisher, has sole control over when the paper is made live on PMC.

Is your Institution a member of the Liebert Author Advocacy Program?

The Liebert Author Advocacy Program (LAAP)provides valuable membership benefits for OA publication to institutional and funding organizations, and supports global funding mandates. Authors who are affiliated with LAAP member institutions receive all the valuable benefits of Liebert OA article publication, and more.

NIH Public Access Policy: In order to assist our authors who have NIH funding to comply with this policy, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. publishers will deposit the final accepted paper (after copy-editing and proofreading) to PubMed Central (PMC) on behalf of the authors. Authors need not take any action. The manuscript's public access posting on PMC will occur 12 months after final publication. This service is provided free of charge. Please note that authors may not deposit manuscripts directly to PMC or other sites without permission from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

Publishing in Subscription Journals

By signing the copyright transfer statement, authors still retain a set of rights that allow for self-archiving.

Authors may archive their preprint manuscripts (version prior to peer review) at any time without restrictions. Authors may archive their postprint manuscripts (accepted version after peer review) in institutional repositories, preprint servers, and research networks after a 12 month embargo. The 12-month embargo period begins when the article is published online. Postprints must not be used for commercial purposes and acknowledgement must be given to the final publication, and publisher, by inserting the DOI number of the article in the following sentence: “Final publication is available from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers http://dx.doi.org/[insert DOI]”. Authors may archive on their personal website without an embargo provided their manuscript is updated with an acknowledgement to the publisher copyright and final published version.

The final published article (version of record) can never be archived in a repository, preprint server, or research network.

Publishing Open Access

Authors that wish to easily comply with funder or institutional open access mandates should consider publishing open access. Liebert Open Accessoption allows authors to make their research freely available online without restrictions. Additionally, Liebert Open Access option allows authors to retain copyright, archive and share the final published version of their article without restrictions. To publish open access please email openaccess@liebertpub.com or visit Liebert Open Access for more information.

The views, opinions, findings, conclusions and recommendations set forth in any Journal article are solely those of the authors of those articles and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy or position of the Journal, its Publisher, its editorial staff or any affiliated Societies and should not be attributed to any of them.

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